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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
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very well.
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and to provide an answer to your hypothetical question: the one who holds the child is the guiltier party. the one who chooses to involve the innocent will always hold the guilt, the holder of the child is dictating the rules of engagement. if you cannot win with honor... perhaps you just cannot win. there are worse things than death, holding a child in the line of fire in hopes of saving your own or incriminating your enemy is one of them.
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The insurgent holding the child is a microcosm of war in general. Each side is both the hostage taker and the hostage taker's enemy. War always involves the killing of civilians. No war should ever be pursued without the understanding that many innocent people will be killed by either side. That is why i think so many people find war to be distasteful. The problem with hiding behing civilians is that it never works to anyone's advantage. Obviously, the threat that our invasion of iraq posed, in terms of civilian casualties, wasn't a large factor in saddam's decision to effectively tell us to "bring it on". What you don't see is that we were "holding the child" in the run up to the war. We'll be "holding the child" right up until the last remnants of america's military presence are gone. It may not be explicit, but that's what it is. Who plans a war without considering the fact that it will necessarily result in the maiming and death of large numbers of completely innocent people? I don't care how smart your bombs are, or how well trained your teenage soldiers are in any kind of law. If the powers that be gave more than just lip service to the plight of the innocent civilian war as we know it would be a thing of the past.
You cannot have a war without holding the civilan populace hostage. I fail to see the "honor" involved with doing so on a macro scale as opposed to a micro scale.